While resource extraction on earth often harms the environment, space offers new avenues for sustainable materials manufacture and mining.
The unique conditions of the space environment provide a valuable opportunity for the discovery and development of new theoretical models and materials that can be applied across multiple industries.
Environments like microgravity aboard the ISS or other payloads can enhance our understanding of material properties and solidification processes in industrial manufacturing.
Material Exploration in Space
In microgravity, a range of materials can be explored including:
- Structural materials such as steel, aluminium, and magnesium, which are fundamental to construction and manufacturing.
- High-performance materials like nickel or cobalt superalloys that are essential for aerospace (high mechanical and dynamical loading) and high-temperature applications.
- Functional materials, including semiconductors, which are crucial for electronics and photovoltaics for the energy transition.
- Novel materials such as Bulk Metallic Glasses (BMGs) and High Entropy Alloys (HEAs), which offer exceptional strength and wear-resistance properties.
These materials are also relevant for improving manufacturing processes on Earth, including casting, additive manufacturing (3D printing), and other deposition techniques. As additive manufacturing technologies are more increasingly used, the demand for recyclable and high-strength polymers increases, both on in Earth and in space.
The Prospect of Extraterrestrial Mining
Space also provides access to untapped resources. Extracting resources from celestial bodies like asteroids, the Moon, and Mars opens a new era of mining. This approach not only provides alternatives to mining on Earth but also provides the raw materials necessary for sustained space exploration and habitation in the future.
The process of prospecting, extracting and processing these resources into products in space, requires the competence of a range of industries: materials, metallurgy, mining, energy and robotics. Access to space is not only vital to understand how we can use space resources but also enables European industry and research to study and improve current methodologies related to resource management, manufacturing and mining.
From Space Mining to Sustainable Earth Extraction
Developing solutions to extract water, oxygen and metals from loose surface deposits (regolith) are expected to drive innovation and lead to the development of new technologies that could help solve problems related to resource management both on Earth and in Space.
An example of how space research is being applied in mining and manufacturing is through biomining experiments conducted on the International Space Station (ISS): BioRock and BioAsteroid. These experiments explored the use of microorganisms to extract valuable minerals from rocks using Biofilm, demonstrating potential applications for more sustainable mining on Earth. Additionally, biomining techniques have the potential to clean up sites that have been polluted with metals. The copper industry is already utilising the findings of this research and stands to benefit from additional commercial research.
